


A Modern Girl

by beaubete



Category: The Hour
Genre: F/M, One-Sided Relationship, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-06
Updated: 2013-10-06
Packaged: 2017-12-28 15:03:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/993322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beaubete/pseuds/beaubete
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bel won’t think a thing of it when they enter together, even though everyone else will.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Modern Girl

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Moonwest](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Moonwest).



> For Moonwest, my "flailing about Freddie" friend.

Celebrating.  That’s what they’re doing: there’s a party down at Lime Grove and they’re late, always late.  Bel won’t think a thing of it when they enter together, even though everyone else will.  That’s the kind of thing Freddie notices, though by now nearly everyone else has noticed, too: the rush he gets from walking in with her on his arm twenty minutes late and ruffled from the hurry over.  It almost doesn’t matter that she thinks him sexless when he gets to touch her arm, hold her hand, and field the jealous stares of the other men.  Almost doesn’t matter, because they’ll never see her as he sees her now, foot propped on the edge of the bed, skirt hitched up high, almost high enough to see—

It's nearly palpitations, what the sight of her inner thigh does to him. She clips her stockings as if he's not even there, as if he's her little brother and she just doesn't care that she's riling him up; the look she gives him when she stands, the way her eyes trace over his mouth still on the neck of the dark bottle at his lips as though he's forgotten how to drink—it’s clear and open. He doesn't let himself imagine if it weren't, imagine her eyes going dark with the knowledge of what she's done to him, how thoroughly she's wrecked him. Imagine the taste of his whisky on her mouth.  
  
"Moneypenny," he says helplessly.  
  
"Stop calling me that," she says back. "It's patronising. I'm not your secretary."  
  
"You could be," he says before the filter on his mouth has a chance to catch up to the thoughts running sprints through his empty head. He imagines they're picturing wholly different scenarios: she thinks he's fantasising about fobbing all his work off onto her and getting off on being bossy; he thinks she'd look lovely bent over his desk with his fingers stretching out the lace at the seat of her knickers. The look she sends him is so disdainful it sends ice through his veins to cool his ardor. He imagines she'd do worse if she knew what he really wants.  
  
Oh, he wants. He wants her spread across the week's stories with her pants in his waistcoat pocket and her stockings at her ankles, knees up and thighs shivering as he shows her how special she truly is. He wants her fingers tied in his hair and her taste on his tongue and the smell of her smeared into his skin so deep it'll never wash off—people will meet him and know he smells of her cunt, know he belongs only to her. He wants her crying as he uses his wicked, clever tongue for something more than smart remarks and petty needling, and he wants her screaming grateful for it. He wants.  
  
It's not even for himself—in his fantasy, he doesn't even touch his cock, just kneels there beneath her and worships at her temple of Venus until the only sounds she can make are those tiny, breathless squeaks she makes when she laughs too hard. He knows if he got a chance to—he can't even imagine it properly, knows it somehow involves getting her wet and naked and probably blasted, giggling drunk and at that stage where they are always both so certain that they can take over the world so long as they're together, but picturing the sweet-damp curls and the slick of her cunt is beyond him; even thinking about it makes him shiver hard as arousal racks his frame—he wouldn't be able to take himself in hand without making a fool of himself, and even he isn't so stupid as to imagine a world where she might let him fuck her. Some things are too far beyond the pale.  
  
And now he's damnably hard in his trousers, shy and slightly sticky at the thought of her. She raises a brow; it's eloquent, saying more in that one movement than another woman might say with a whole parcel of words, and really, that's why he loves her so goddamn much. Her fingers curl around his, tugging the whisky bottle from his nerveless grip to swig at it like a man.  
  
"Okay there, Freddie?" she asks.

"Yeah," he manages to croak. "Yeah."

And the ride to the party, smashed together in the back of the taxicab like drunk little sardines, is torturous.  Her leg presses against his; he draws away for propriety’s sake and she presses again.  A less fatalistically realistic man would think she was flirting, but she’s just tipsy and excited.  The party’s in her honor, ostensibly, to celebrate another week without going off-air, which is apparently a very real threat with Freddie working on it—he doesn’t listen at doors, but then nor do people seem to care much if he hears them.  There are people who believe he’s got his job from fucking her, and he knows how deeply that would amuse her if the thought didn’t break this tenuous spell that keeps her from leaving him behind.  She’d laugh at the thought of him as the incompetent boytoy.  It’d bother him less if it were true, he thinks.  Instead, she presses her thigh against his and chatters on about Hector, and it’s a hell of a thing to feel cuckolded when you’re not even married, but there it is. 

And at the party she hovers around other men, circling, while he finds a pretty secretary to chat up, and wouldn’t it just serve her right, that Ms. Rowley, for him to take another girl home and leave her to fend for herself and fall asleep with her earrings on?  But he finds himself bidding a wistful farewell to the tea girl when he sees Bel making her way to the door; their eyes meet and she gives him a shrug that says _shall we go?_ loudly enough that he wonders how she misses the wolfish grins that come from the other men around her.  He can almost imagine it as they are imagining it: tangling together in the back of the taxicab, her skirt up around her waist and his fingers busy as she moans into his mouth.  Perhaps she wouldn’t even wait to make it into the cab, letting him lift her against the wall to suck at her throat while he touches blind into that dark, secret world of satin and lace and hot, hot skin.  He could—she’d never sink to her knees, never let him unwrap a skin and actually have her, but he could rub it off against the elastic strap of her garter, perhaps.  She’d let him ruck her up and press against her until sweat and his own excitement made it easy to fuck against her arse.  He’d have to pull away; if he stained her clothes, she’d kill him.

But that’s not what happens.  She curls against him, sleepy, in the backseat, and when he guides her to her bed she gives him a fond, slow smile. 

“Are you tired, Ms. Rowley?” he asks her then, when it’s just the two of them and she can smile that secret, happy smile she has just for him.  She nods.  “Then go to sleep.”

“I can’t.  Not in my clothes,” she tells him back, and he can see the joy in her at how wonderful everything is right now and feels guilty for the jump of his heart at her words.  “Help?”

He’s helped before.  He’ll help again.  He takes her shoes off and carefully places them on the floor, sighing as he picks up a foot and starts to rub.  The sound she makes goes straight to his cock; he turns a little so she can’t see.

“That was a pretty girl,” she tells him, voice soft.  “The one you were talking to earlier.”

“Clarissa.  The tea girl,” he clarifies, still rubbing absently at the arch of her instep. 

“She wanted you,” she says, and oh, it’s cruel.  He only nods.  “You agree?”  Bel sounds surprised, as if she didn’t expect him to know what it means when a woman tips her head that way, twirls her hair, tilts her hips toward him and spells sex with her body.

“My dad,” he says, an excuse. 

“You don’t get much privacy, do you, Freddie?”  Her giggle turns to a sigh as he presses almost viciously at the pad beneath her toes.  “You’re good at that.”

“I’m good at a lot of things,” he says back, and for once he thinks maybe it’s landed.  She arches into the bed and pulls her foot from his grasp, skirt falling high above her garters as she switches, pushing her other foot into his hands.  He’s obedient, repeating the touches on that one.

“I know.”

He lets her have that one.  For once he’s not sure what she’s trying to say; the expression on her face doesn’t match any kind of secret meaning he’s ever known from her, her body language says nothing but contented comfort.  “You should sleep,” he says finally.  He doesn’t stop his massage, won’t stop touching her until he has to.

“Can’t,” she says back.  “How do you meet women, then?” she continues.  He swallows hard. 

“Don’t.”

“Don’t?”

“Please.”  Now he’s certain she has to know; even unobservant Bel isn’t blind. 

“They think we’re sleeping together,” she offers.  His hands still, stutter, then start again, a little meaner than before. 

“I know.”

“Isn’t that ridiculous?”

“Isn’t it,” he echoes.

“You could here, you know,” she says.  It doesn’t click at first, then, “—so long as you changed the sheets after.  I wouldn’t mind.”  Oh.  She’s trying to be modern, offering her bed up for him to tryst in so his pensioner dad won’t have to listen to him getting his end in.

“Thanks,” he says, and he can hear the flatness in his tone.

“I mean it, Freddie.  You seem so lonely sometimes.”

“How could I be lonely when I’ve got you, Moneypenny?” he tries for cheer. 

“That’s not the same thing.”

“I know.”

The silence isn’t quite companionable, and then—“Do you wank a lot, then?”

“What?”  He doesn’t yelp, but it’s a near thing.

“Oh, come on, Freddie.  Mr. Kinsey says you lot do it all the time.”  And now they’re back to playful taunting about his lack of a sex life.  He feels sick.

“You’re being unkind,” he tells her.

“You’re being ridiculous,” she responds.

“You’re drunk.”

“You’re not normally this shy.”

“You’re being a spiteful bitch,” he finally snaps, pulling away.  “Pull your skirt down.  You look like a tart with it up around your neck and a man you aren’t seeing in your bed.”

“Is that what you are?” she asks.  “A man I’m not seeing?”

“I’m a lot of things, but never enough.”

She watches him, then carefully plucks at her skirt until the tops of her stockings are covered again.  “I’m sorry, Freddie.”

His breath is hot, huge in his chest and pressing outward like a controlled explosion.  “It’s fine,” he says, always forgiving.  He can’t hate her, even when he ought to.  “You’ll forget this all by morning.”

“If it helps, I do it.  Right here,” she says, and her fingers trace the strap of a garter through her skirt, and he knows he shouldn’t because she’s _drunk_ but he watches, eyes hot and locked as she pets at herself with just fingertips.

“God,” he mutters.

“You shouldn’t be embarrassed, Freddie.  Women have urges, too.”

“Do they.”

She hums in agreement, letting her legs fall open as she pets harder.  “Did you see him tonight, Freddie?  Top form.  I can’t—”

It’s ice water down the front of his trousers.  She’s _hateful_ , positively full of hate.  He hates himself more.  “Alright then, Moneypenny,” he says briskly, pulling himself to his feet.  “Time for bed.”

She makes a soft sound of agreement.  “Help me with my stockings?  If I sleep in them, I’ll have bruises.”  And oh, her hands are so sure and her skin is so soft when she guides him up beneath her skirt to fumble open the clips.  He can almost taste her on the air, can definitely smell her on his wrist where she wrapped her fingers around to lead him, and he groans.  Her hands go under her skirt and she shimmies out of the belt when it’s unattached, and he can see her wrists disappearing into the fabric, can imagine the tops of her stockings digging in and rolling slightly without the support.

“Take them off?” he asks.  His mouth is dry.

“Yes.”

It’s a chance he may not ever get again; he hates himself for wanting her so badly he’ll take whatever drunken fumblings she’ll grant him and curls his fingertips over the top edge, the heat of her cunt radiating against the back of his hand as he coaxes the nylon down until it’s a little curled loop in his palm.  He reaches up to get the next and her hand stops him, holding him near but not touching.

“Freddie?” she asks, and suddenly her voice is childlike, small.  “Am I a bad person for wanting him so much?”

It breaks his heart in just the way it does each time he catches her watching Hector with that hopeless look on her face.  The same way it does when he catches Hector looking back.  “Of course not, Bel,” he says softly, leaning up to kiss her brow.  “You can’t help who you want.  No matter how much you try.”

He leaves her half-asleep in her bed, half-dressed and stirred enough that he knows he could have had her.  If he’d had an ounce more of self-confidence, he could have had her there in her bed, possibly even fucked her.  Instead, he’s going home to a long bath and a slow wank, the scent of her skin in his nose and miles of her spread out in his imagination.  But even in his imagination, it’s not him she’s calling for.


End file.
